Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I know it can be difficult to determine based on appearance, but thought it would be worth asking. This snake was purchased as GPRat as a hatchling, is now 3 years old, about 42 inches long and it the only GPRat we have seen, so nothing to compare it with to distinguish it from anery corns. Color seems to have more brown tones than anery corns - any opinions from people who have them?

mary v.

another photo

Looks a little heavy for an emoryi, and the head is more like guttata guttata. Also, looking at my pics, the black around the blotches is darker, while the edges of blotches on your speciman shows very little black. My guess is that it's a hybrid, or an emoryi that has been crossed with guttata, a corn snake. I wouldn't consider it a true Emory's Rat unless I trusted the source very well and knew exactly what they had.

Here's a couple pics of my s. Texas emoryi from Brazos Island...

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Ratsnake Haven: Elaphe schrencki, dione, bimaculata, mandarina, conspicillata, porphyracea, taeniura, situla, and emoryi.

rat snake Terry. Are they E.g. meahllmorum? Some people haven't fully accepted the paper done by Vaughan, Dixon, and Thomas in 1996 yet. The snake pictured to start this thread may be one from the intergration zone that exists between E.g emoryi and E.g. meahllmorum in west Texas around the southern part of Edwards Plateau expanding to the El Paso region. Here's my w/c Hwy 277 Emoryi.

Terry Parks

Wow both of those are very impressive in the richness of their color. Thanks for sharing photos,

mary v.

Thanks for the comments. Your snake looks really nice, I failed to make a comment on that. Thanks for posting a pic and the question to generate a nice thread on emoryi's.

Terry Parks

Thanks, Terry.

I think I spoke a little too soon. I really haven't seen that many emoryi, yet, and there is quite a bit of variation. After posting I found another picture at Don Soderberg's site that looks quite a bit like the one at the start of this thread. Sometimes we can't resist commenting, even though we might not be experts on the topic. Anyway, here's a pic of Don's South Texas Ratsnake....

I now have 2.2 of the Brazos Island Ratsnake, which is classified as E. g. meahllmorum, E. emoryi meahllmorum, or just E. emoryi (variation: meahllmorum), depending on who you're talking to. I believe that E. g. meahllmorum is the most accepted at this time, but that it may change to E. emoryi in the near future, when the next scientific paper comes out. I increased my stock from Don a couple months ago as I want to try keeping this form for awhile anyway. I also got 1.1 of the reverse-striped "meahllmorum". That form looks like this (also from Don's site)...

Actually some have more complete stripes than that.

Your emoryi looks pretty cool. Is that from the intergradation zone? I should have known from all the variation that the possibility of the initial snake was greater. Look how different this "intermontana" emoryi from w. CO looks....

...and we haven't even looked at any northern emoryi in this thread.

Oh, well, hope this post helps a little. Back to work....

TC

Ratsnake Haven Gallery

Intermontana can vary quite a bit too.

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Terry Parks

>>rat snake Terry. Are they E.g. meahllmorum? Some people haven't fully accepted the paper done by Vaughan, Dixon, and Thomas in 1996 yet.

Puff! That split was old when that paper came out! Doesn'tr anyone read any more? Vaughan et al. just supported a previous study with they printed that paper. They weren't the first to report that. Besides, that wasn't even what the paper was about. The paper was about east Texas "corns" and the emoryi complex was secondary to that.

> Here's my w/c Hwy 277 Emoryi.

Where at? I've got 2 female 277s.
KJ

just one more shot - thanks,

Your question might be best answered by one of the corn snake experts, but I was sort of under the impression that emoryi were basically an anerythristic form of guttata that inhabited the western part of the range. The pic below is of a Val Verde county TX(277, Mail Trail) individual. This guy is pretty typical of west Texas emoryi. Your animal doesn't look that much different to me. Can an animal from anery "eastern" guttata stock be called a Great Plains rat? I suppose you can, but technically a true emoryi would come from stock in the western parts of the guttata range, in my opinion. Seems kind of goofy that people would breed corn snakes to look like easily available wild types, but hell.......they are working on corns to get them to look like Everglades rats.

I too often wondered why some of the corns are bred to look like everglades, great plains rats and even to some degree the deckerts rat.

I enjoy the natural colorations and varibility of the North American rats much more than the morphs of corns/rats out there.

But that is what makes the world go round!

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Good luck and Happy Herping
Brian

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Good luck and Happy Herping
Brian

I have an anerythristic cornsnake and although it bears a striking resemblence, I think that yours is a ratsnake. The pattern on the sides of your snake are fairly irregular compared to that of most cornsnakes.

And they are different from an anery cornsnake. An anery cornsnake is a genetically recessive trait of the snake Elaphe guttata guttata. The great plains ratsnake is the normal/wild form of Elaphe guttata emoryi.

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alstiver@hotmail.com

Current pets:
1.0 '01 Hypo snow cornsnake (Tesla Coil)
0.1 '02 Ghost (pastel) cornsnake (Banshee)
1.1 '02 Bloodred cornsnakes (Desi and Luci Too)
0.0.2 Goldfish (Isamu, and Yuki; RIP Kabuki)
1.0 '99 American Eskimo mix (Rusty)

Next to be added:
0.1 BCI
1.1 Amber cornsnakes
1.1 Hypo Het Lavendar cornsnakes

That looks like a very light emoryi. It COULD be an emoryi X guttata, thogh. The background color looks a bit too light for emoryi, but I'd guess they are as variable as normal corns, so it's certainly possible that its a full-blood.
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...and I think to myself, "What a wonderful world."

Its a west Texas emoryi-great plains ratsnake.

Luke

it looks like a South Texas guttata to me which would make it a Southwestern Ratsnake (P. guttata meahllmorum), if you accept that subspecies.
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Chris Harrison

...he was beginning to realize he was the creature of a god that appreciated the discomfort of his worshippers - W. Somerset Maugham

Looks like it could have been caught north of Freer...lol. Pretty typical south Texas emoryi from the central portion of their range (in south Texas) looking to me.
KJ

Really appreciate the input and the photos for comparison. Great Plains ratsnakes may be plain but they are quite uncommon here in Alberta, Canada (almost never see them available) so I am glad that this guy may, in fact be what it was represented to be.

thanks,

mary v.